~~ war. what are we fighting for.
May. 16th, 2003 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkait somewhat bothers me, my lack of interest in thinking about people making hugely wrong choices that kill people, people's lives controlling the lives of others, the sense that nothing you do anymore is of your own making. many, many people write about the angst and frustration inherent in someone choosing to be "on the wrong side". how the hero would feel knowing that he wants a villain, someone he finds morally disgusting. how would a hero cope, etc.
the problem is, if you set up a world where there -is- an obvious "wrong side", where everyone who joins is wrong and dark and morally decrepit, you're automatically sliding right into the worst sort of fantasy world. i mean, who'd argue that voldemort is evil? no one. this is why it's a children's book. but even so-- just because you follow voldemort doesn't -make- you voldemort. just because you're a nazi doesn't mean you're morally vacant. there are so many lies both sides tell themselves, there isn't anyone contemporaneous with them who could judge them fairly.
what about all those axioms? there is no right or wrong, only power and so on. all those cliches about war must hold -some- truth to them.
free will doesn't enter into it-- it's a questionable concept, if anything. certainly, the hero could hold these views, but story after story from the hero's pov gets old. everyone who writes warfic seems to write it from either the perspective of-- everyone loses, everyone is evil, everyone is morally corrupt-- or, there is right and there's wrong and love is pretty much doomed if it escalates the conflict.
i'm tired of seeing the doom inherent in being a nazi-- excuse me, death eater. this us/them mentality just never gets really challenged very thoroughly, it seems. obviously, it's present in the potterverse itself, but you would think you could maybe shake it up a little sometimes, or something. oh sure, there is slytherin-positive fic, but that's just the flip-side of the coin. all you're doing is making the slytherins (or the death eaters) be the "right" side.
there is a simple concept that i don't see very much: war itself is corrupt. it is not that your ideals make you corrupt, or your calling muggle-borns `mudblood' that makes you corrupt. it is when you actively persecute and hurt any group of people for any reason whatsoever-- that makes you corrupt. i'm tired of seeing this dichotomy played out over and over, as if the gryffindor's persecution of the slytherins is somehow "okay", as if killing people just because they kill others is "okay". in war, there is no moral high ground. harry has no intrinsic moral right to be disgusted with draco. draco isn't voldemort. draco is following the path in front of him just as harry is.
so maybe it's not that i dislike warfic. maybe it's just that i'm tired of seeing this same old simplistic moral dilemma played out over and over and over and over.
can draco be "okay" for harry to love even though he's a death eater?
and it's not the answer that matters here, because it does vary, it's the question itself. is -harry- okay for -draco- to love because he's a moralistically narrow-minded self-righteous gryffindor?
obviously, in the "real world", we are all just people. there are no "bad people" and "good people" in war. just because you're in the iraqi army doesn't make you saddam, and neither does being in the american army make you mother theresa, and vice versa. it's the person's personal conscience that determines their character, not the things they do when following orders. can we move on, please?
so i guess my issue with all these fics is-- all sorts of people who haven't really thought through these issues enough just -write- this sort of scenario because -obviously- draco will be a death eater unless he's "redeemed" and so harry & draco's love has Doom and Angst.
harry is the auror, draco is the anti-auror. yes, we get it.
and throughout, this duality is kept up. draco is "bad", harry tolerates it or snaps or they have an unhealthy, brutal relationship. and sure, there are lots of reasons for them to have one. but why write about this simple dilemma so often?
personally, i like their personal dynamic-- i think their reaction to each other is instinctive and personal (as shown by the scene in madame malkin's, where harry immediately has issues with malfoy and malfoy immediately acts like a spoiled brat, which is probably the worst offense as far as harry is concerned, slytherin nothing), or at least i like to think so. they are in fact, on opposite sides, but i think that's just a natural consequence of them being so different as far as personality (which is related to their similarities-- which kind of drive them apart too). i think that by making it all a question of choice and consequence and duty and ideals you're only incidentally writing about harry & draco. you're really making them even more symbolic than they already are.
goddamn. gimme disillusioned!harry & draco, just once. not so much with the brothers-in-arms or enemies-attract, and more with the just harry and just draco and a war raging all around them if it has to be. and this, without apologizing for them, or making them nicer or making draco more "good". `artful facade' was sort of like that.
people are people, that's all. they're not more inhuman or inherently more frightening whether they follow dumbledore or voldemort. it's all about choices, yes-- but that's one choice out of many. i suppose you could write about opposing sides, and that's fine, i just want to sometimes get a sense that this is all a house of cards. just once, even.
i'm not trying to be uber morally relativistic (though maybe, i don't know). i guess i want to see more flaws in the aurors, more darkness in the "good" guys, more mistakes on either side, more hope everywhere, more of a foundation for how these people are basically fighting a civil war, and these are their friends, their neighbors, these are the people they'll have to coexist peacefully with once it's all over. so voldemort started an insane cult-- so did david koresh. he amassed weapons too.
you just can't write every death eater as personally represenative of the actions of them all. there are always traitors on either side-- hello, wormtail. there is always bleed-through, always mixed loyalties. a harry and draco who are completely representative of these ideals which have no place in real war just bore me after a point.
and man. ramble much?
the problem is, if you set up a world where there -is- an obvious "wrong side", where everyone who joins is wrong and dark and morally decrepit, you're automatically sliding right into the worst sort of fantasy world. i mean, who'd argue that voldemort is evil? no one. this is why it's a children's book. but even so-- just because you follow voldemort doesn't -make- you voldemort. just because you're a nazi doesn't mean you're morally vacant. there are so many lies both sides tell themselves, there isn't anyone contemporaneous with them who could judge them fairly.
what about all those axioms? there is no right or wrong, only power and so on. all those cliches about war must hold -some- truth to them.
free will doesn't enter into it-- it's a questionable concept, if anything. certainly, the hero could hold these views, but story after story from the hero's pov gets old. everyone who writes warfic seems to write it from either the perspective of-- everyone loses, everyone is evil, everyone is morally corrupt-- or, there is right and there's wrong and love is pretty much doomed if it escalates the conflict.
i'm tired of seeing the doom inherent in being a nazi-- excuse me, death eater. this us/them mentality just never gets really challenged very thoroughly, it seems. obviously, it's present in the potterverse itself, but you would think you could maybe shake it up a little sometimes, or something. oh sure, there is slytherin-positive fic, but that's just the flip-side of the coin. all you're doing is making the slytherins (or the death eaters) be the "right" side.
there is a simple concept that i don't see very much: war itself is corrupt. it is not that your ideals make you corrupt, or your calling muggle-borns `mudblood' that makes you corrupt. it is when you actively persecute and hurt any group of people for any reason whatsoever-- that makes you corrupt. i'm tired of seeing this dichotomy played out over and over, as if the gryffindor's persecution of the slytherins is somehow "okay", as if killing people just because they kill others is "okay". in war, there is no moral high ground. harry has no intrinsic moral right to be disgusted with draco. draco isn't voldemort. draco is following the path in front of him just as harry is.
so maybe it's not that i dislike warfic. maybe it's just that i'm tired of seeing this same old simplistic moral dilemma played out over and over and over and over.
can draco be "okay" for harry to love even though he's a death eater?
and it's not the answer that matters here, because it does vary, it's the question itself. is -harry- okay for -draco- to love because he's a moralistically narrow-minded self-righteous gryffindor?
obviously, in the "real world", we are all just people. there are no "bad people" and "good people" in war. just because you're in the iraqi army doesn't make you saddam, and neither does being in the american army make you mother theresa, and vice versa. it's the person's personal conscience that determines their character, not the things they do when following orders. can we move on, please?
so i guess my issue with all these fics is-- all sorts of people who haven't really thought through these issues enough just -write- this sort of scenario because -obviously- draco will be a death eater unless he's "redeemed" and so harry & draco's love has Doom and Angst.
harry is the auror, draco is the anti-auror. yes, we get it.
and throughout, this duality is kept up. draco is "bad", harry tolerates it or snaps or they have an unhealthy, brutal relationship. and sure, there are lots of reasons for them to have one. but why write about this simple dilemma so often?
personally, i like their personal dynamic-- i think their reaction to each other is instinctive and personal (as shown by the scene in madame malkin's, where harry immediately has issues with malfoy and malfoy immediately acts like a spoiled brat, which is probably the worst offense as far as harry is concerned, slytherin nothing), or at least i like to think so. they are in fact, on opposite sides, but i think that's just a natural consequence of them being so different as far as personality (which is related to their similarities-- which kind of drive them apart too). i think that by making it all a question of choice and consequence and duty and ideals you're only incidentally writing about harry & draco. you're really making them even more symbolic than they already are.
goddamn. gimme disillusioned!harry & draco, just once. not so much with the brothers-in-arms or enemies-attract, and more with the just harry and just draco and a war raging all around them if it has to be. and this, without apologizing for them, or making them nicer or making draco more "good". `artful facade' was sort of like that.
people are people, that's all. they're not more inhuman or inherently more frightening whether they follow dumbledore or voldemort. it's all about choices, yes-- but that's one choice out of many. i suppose you could write about opposing sides, and that's fine, i just want to sometimes get a sense that this is all a house of cards. just once, even.
i'm not trying to be uber morally relativistic (though maybe, i don't know). i guess i want to see more flaws in the aurors, more darkness in the "good" guys, more mistakes on either side, more hope everywhere, more of a foundation for how these people are basically fighting a civil war, and these are their friends, their neighbors, these are the people they'll have to coexist peacefully with once it's all over. so voldemort started an insane cult-- so did david koresh. he amassed weapons too.
you just can't write every death eater as personally represenative of the actions of them all. there are always traitors on either side-- hello, wormtail. there is always bleed-through, always mixed loyalties. a harry and draco who are completely representative of these ideals which have no place in real war just bore me after a point.
and man. ramble much?
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-24 06:33 am (UTC)I completely agree that there are too few people willing to look at the real darkness, the moral ambiguity, that is hidden beneath the surface of Potterverse. It is partially fear, I think, of certain aspects of others (read: ourselves) that makes us demarcate such clear boundaries between nonexistent things (such as good and evil). We are afraid of acknowledging that murderers can be capable of love and moral beliefs, and that 'heroes' can have questionable motives. To do so would be to challenge ourselves too much--and as I'm sure you know, most people are simply caught in a state of intellectual inertia--they simply move in the directions their upbringing/environment pushed them in, and don't bother to challenge anything they're taught.
I myself delight in moral subversion. My only HP novel, 'If Thine Enemy' (http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1067745) (also my oldest and most badly written story!), focuses on an unlikely alliance between Lucius Malfoy and Harry Potter--Harry discovering that not all things are as simple as they might appear, and that Dumbledore's facade of the kindly Headmaster is really nothing but a brilliant ruse. Severus Snape calls Albus 'the cheerful autocrat'. For indeed, there is no 'Light' and 'Dark'--merely a battle for power between two different groups of people with different political end. Politics, politics. That's all it is.
Moral relativism is a peculiarly redeeming thing, intimidating and dangerous as it is to the uninitiated. Many current political/military problems simply would not exist were the majority of people willing to acknowledge that perhaps there aren't so many 'differences' between different sides at all.
no subject
Date: 2003-05-24 11:48 am (UTC)for some reason, all else aside, i tend to get defensive about dumbledore. and rather doubtful about lucius. see, it's like...
i did say this somewhere, but-- i think it's your personal conscience that determines what you're like as a person, not your affiliation, and you could have any manner of conscience wherever you are.
you -can- be a mean, nasty, horrid person, or a good, kind, well-meaning person. the moral relativism is not that we all have the same amount of darkness, but that you can't judge the darkness based on a label like "death eater" alone. it's not enough. there's more to people than that. but.
there is plenty of evidence in my mind that albus-- yes, somewhat cryptic and autocratic, but he is wise, and i think he cares deeply for his students and has a lot of kindness in him, and most importantly, humor. his eyes are always smiling, always twinkling. just as i exclude voldemort from my good vs. evil dichotomy since he's not a realistic character but he is what he is-- evil, so also dumbledore-- is good. his eyes twinkle with light. he is not all-knowing, he makes mistakes i'm sure, but he means well and he'd never intentionally harm anyone, i'm sure, because he hasn't harmed tom riddle when he could've, did he? it's just. the desire to bring down albus and uplift lucius bothers me, seems like a simpler sort of relativism.
with draco and harry-- they really ARE unformed yet, there are a lot of what-if's there, a lot of blanks to fill in. harry has darkness in him, and draco is most -definitely- just a spoiled brat, and i do believe he'd make a piss-poor death eater.
but. lucius. is not voldemort, no. signs point to him being an amoral, power-hungry, racist bastard who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals, who may love his son but has never nurtured him, and who actively -helped- voldemort rise to power once again because he simply doesn't care about anyone but himself, really, as far as i can tell. draco is just an extension of himself in this case. no well-loved child would turn out like draco has.
so really, there's a gulf of character, of conscience, between albus and lucius.
whereas harry & draco... they're kinda close. a tip of the scale, and one could've been the other. in my head, anyway >:D
~reena
Relativism I
Date: 2003-05-24 12:52 pm (UTC)Your comments on Draco are fascinating. Actually, I do think it is possible for a well-loved child to turn out like that--it has happened before. While I am more willing to go with the 'bad family history theory' in his case (only because I'm biased in favor of him! *squees fangirlishly*) it is possible for someone to be 'nasty by nature'. For example, take two children brought up by the same parents. My own mother was brought up in a large, loving family. She's turned out to be a lovely, kind, thoughtful person--but one of her sisters, as well-loved as everyone else--has turned out to be positively malicious. *shrug* Even if there's something wrong with that example, I'm sure you can imagine a hypothetical child who is hypothetically nasty. By nature.
This is a fascinating Nature VS Nurture debate, actually. If someone thinks that upbringing is the deciding factor, then perhaps they'd think that Tom Riddle would have been a nicer boy had he experienced a happier childhood... Yet Harry's childhood isn't that perfect either... Who's to say such things are final/set in stone? There are those who say Adolf Hitler wouldn't have turned out too bad if he'd been allowed to attend art school as he'd applied to do (he started his politicizing when he got rejected by said school). Of course, I can neither support nor deny these arguments, never having looked into the mind of Hitler myself...
And Albus. Egads, he's one of my favorite characters too! *huggles* But I like him precisely because I think much of his 'twinke-eyed' behavior is a carefully orchestrated act--partly in-character, partly not. Not in a bad way, of course, but I've always thought he was a cold mastermind cleverly disguising his capabilities in the 'kindly old headmaster' persona. He makes me sh-sh-shiver in appreciation. A few reasons are that he allows Harry to go back to the Dursleys despite knowing that Harry is treated badly there (I mean: the letters addressed to the cupboard, for example). This shows that he's not really concerned for Harry's comfort. And it's simply not possible that Little Whinging is safer than Hogwarts, because by Merlin, Harry's allowed at Hogs during the school year, anyway...
And it seems to me that Albus puts a lot of innocent people at risk, by allowing Harry and Hermione to use the timeturner, for example, which is something I can't imagine Harry's parents being happy about--a timeturner mistake can end up with both time-travelers dead. Ouch. There are many things Albus does which are kind, in a way, but also dangerous--I can't imagine who had Harry's best interests in heart, like a parent, allowing Harry to indulge in some of the dangerous things Albus practically encourages him to indulge in.
And many other things... Gah, I can't recall now... But it seems to me that Albus is using Harry to fight Voldemort, because he knows Harry's power. He might feel some affection for the boy, but in the end he is honing a tool. Yet another weapon in the war.
-->Continued in next post, because msg was too long...
Relativism II
Date: 2003-05-24 12:53 pm (UTC)-->Continued from last post, because msg was too long:
Severus as well. Albus uses Snape as a spy, which is to say he authorizes the atrocities Snape may have to commit as one of the Death Eaters, in order to gain more information about Voldemort. It's a matter of moral compromise, you see? 'The Greater Good', so to speak... It doesn't matter if Severus might have to kill/torture Muggles (one can only presume, according to canon, that the Death Eaters do kill), as long as Albus gets his information. He doesn't have that wildly moralistic: 'I won't let you kill any innocents!' attitude. Instead, he folds his hands and watches, using his spy to gather information. Essentially: he is more the Slytherin hero, weighing opportunity costs, than the Gryffindor do-gooder, who would just jump in to save people. (This is going with the canon interpretation of Slytherins and Gryffindors--not that I agree with it all the time.)
Albus' use of Severus is rather like the practice employed by Britain/America in WWII, when they sent spies among the Nazis. Some of these spies were actually in charge of sending Jews to the gas chambers, but (whether or not they liked it) they had to allow such things to happen (and even participate) because they had to keep their cover.
See what I mean? The lines aren't so clear anymore... In the end, winning any war, political, magical or otherwise, is a matter of moral compromise. (Hey, that rhymed! :D)
And heheh, I don't quite 'lift up' Lucius... I prefer my villains to stay villainish to a certain degree, because darkness is interesting. Just slightly more complex than the I-laugh-maniacally-and-kill-Muggles kind of idea of a Death Eater. I wanted to write a Lucius that might be cruel, but could also be an aesthete and a gentleman.
*yawns* My, I know I've opened a can of worms with my Albus speech. I actually had much more proof before, but I've lost it now... *goes to re-read books*
Re: Relativism II
Date: 2003-05-24 01:28 pm (UTC)(which is why i'm all "wow" when someone thinks i -do- have a argument which would hold water).
i see your point, with dumbledore. hmm. it's not just the eye-twinkling (i don't mean to say he's a "kindly old man", just that he's silly & has a sense of humor and he's wacky-- and like, this is jkr, wacky is a major plus 'cause she makes everyone she seems to identify-with/love wacky or at least odd-- take remus for example-- i see dumbledore as an older remus mixed with some weasley somewhere, eheheheh).
anyway, also important is the way he says these wise, prophetic things to harry-- like when harry finds the Mirror. he's the old man on top of the mountain-- not meddling, just kind of conserving his power and not interfering in the affairs of the world. his time is past, and he does what he can and he tries to shape and mold the hero he can no longer be.
he -did- do the gryffindor-hero (i love the slytherin-hero idea, btw, lovelovelove it) thing with grindelwald. this is not his fight. this is harry's fight. i think a largish portion of this can be explained in mythic terms, not thinking of it in even semi-realistic terms. harry is The Hero. dumbledore is The Mentor. simple as pie. the mentor is there to guide the hero, give him advice that he can -use-, tools that will come in handy, be kind but not coddling-- think of merlin. hello, dumbledore, first class wizard, order of merlin. *smirks*
dumbledore isn't the hero or the fairy godmother. he's not there to rescue the hero, but allow the hero to rescue himself. he is the Watcher, the Observer, the magic and wisdom resource. he is the last resort and the unbreakable rock for harry to count on. eventually, harry will probably have to let go and dumbledore will go out of commission entirely, leaving harry to fend for himself. harry can't afford to depend on him too much. and this is harry's story through and through, this all makes sense to me.
i often think it's strange that hp readers almost never look at the books as part of a mythic, fantasy tradition. sure, most of us have -read- cs lewis and jrr tolkien and the brothers grimm, but i guess since jkr's books are set halfway in the "real world", it's easy to forget that this is most definitely a fairy tale.
i too think the nurture-vs-nature question is v. interesting and i'm chagrined i'd forgotten to consider it. harry's status as a semi-normal boy-hero after his childhood (one of the things that makes this a mythic tale) pretty much sets the tone for much of the self-determinism prevalent throughout the books. not -nature- (since this rules out hermione), so much as nature, self-determined, created, nature-by-will-through-chance (like it was will-through-chance-- or luck-- that harry lived). or something.
i've no doubt that draco really -is- nasty in many ways. a brat, a nasty brat (i meant that when i called him a brat, i was just also was saying that as far as -lucius- goes, it seems there's no great father/son relationship there).
i think draco isn't -just- a nasty brat-- he seems spoiled and prejudiced and self-centered and insensitive, but when not antagonistic, he seems... i dunno... normal(ish), like in madame malkin's or with crabbe & goyle or his father in the dark arts shop.
and well, personally, by giving lucius an aristocratic veneer, it doesn't... um... make him necessarily more interesting or deep. on the one hand, i believe people can be mean and sociopathic and amoral and so on. but, "villain" is a problematic word. he's kind of a despicable person, but i dunno. i don't think anyone -can- be a caricature and be remotely realistic. admittedly, my feelings on lucius are less than well-formed -.- i have a certain distaste for him which probably clouds things :D (but i can't talk, since i wrote this (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=witchbabie&itemid=7396). *laughs*